


Curiosity Killed The Cat

by Elioshines



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album)
Genre: Gen, Major Original Character(s), Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:15:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27120991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elioshines/pseuds/Elioshines
Summary: Curiosity killed the cat is a short story based on the Danger Days universe.Cindy is a 18 years old girl from Battery City, where she doesn't fit. She has a job she hates in a Better Living Industries (Blind, for short) factory and lives alone in the workers' neighborhood since her parents death left her lonely and in debts, years ago. One day, she hears noise from the empty appartment upstairs...Trigger Warning : MisgenderingThanks to :Many, many thanks to Solune for her editing work. Solune is not only a supportive friend, she's also (and mostly) an awesome musician, and you should definitely check her bandcamp and her instagram :https://soluneandthesolunes.bandcamp.com/https://www.instagram.com/solunemoreau/Disclaimer :I do not own the Danger Days universe or its characters.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Curiosity Killed The Cat

Cindy's alarm clock is ringing, and she turns in her sheets, yawning. As Better Living Industries logo appears in green light on her ceiling, the cheerful voice of their star Android, Emily, is encouraging her to get up:

"Morning worker N-2210! It's 5AM, time to enjoy a new day of work in the beautiful Battery City! The Blimk factory is waiting for you in 30 minutes!"

Cindy slaps the alarm clock and the voice stop reciting her daily schedule as the room goes pitch black again. The young woman opens her dresser. "Hi mom, hi dad" she says, waving at a picture of her parents holding a tiny, squishy version of herself. The brunette puts on her uniform, a white slack and a black and white jacket with the BLI logo on it. Cindy hates that outfit. It's bland and the fabric is so stiff that it irritates her skin, leaving red marks on her neck and wrists at the end of her shifts.

The good side of her job is that she gets as much Blimk as she wants, as long as she doesn't get caught stealing it. Adren, her manager, is a 50-year-old man with grey hair and a grumpy face. He's rather nice to her, or at least tries to be. When she comes to work that day, he welcomes her with a disappointed look, though.

\- Come on, you forgot to put on your contacts, little dude! I don't mind your eyes being weird, but you have to take care of your appearance if you want to be a husband someday!, he advises.

The thing is, Cindy doesn't want to be a husband. She doesn't really know what she wants to be. When she was younger, she wanted to be a friend, but other kids found her too strange. She has _a misconception_ , her right eye is brown and the left one is green. We don't like asymmetry in Battery City. Everything has to be regular, uniform, perfect. Everything has to fit in; everyone has to find their place. Cindy was a daughter once, and she was pretty good at it, until her parents died. She's not bad at being a worker, but that's something you do, not something you are. Plus it's easy, the interface, COW, gives her all the instructions, when it's not interrupted by this guy rambling about pigs and traffic. He keeps saying he's a doctor, but Cindy highly doubts that. _Doctors don't host radio shows, do they?_

The only thing Cindy considers herself to be is a collector. She finds things of all sorts. That's where she got her name from. She was exploring the landfill, and she found a box with an old record in it. On its cover, a girl wearing a black and red dress is dancing barefoot in front of a bright blue wall with a yellow door. An inscription in big red letters reads "CINDY LAUPER" and there's also a weird white inscription that the young woman couldn't decipher. Maybe some ancient language.

Thinking about the record, Cindy smiles and starts humming her favorite song from it as she pours a meat flavor bucket into a huge Blimk tank. It smells exactly like POWER PUP, she knows because it's the only food she can afford to buy.

The chorus of the song says _"when the working day is done, oh girls, they wanna have fun"_. And maybe that's what Cindy wants to be. A girl in a red dress having fun, collecting random junk because it's bright and loud and imperfect, just like her. Maybe what she wants is her name not to be a secret. Maybe she wants not to be called by a number every morning.

Cindy sighs. It's only a fantasy. Maybe Cindy Lauper's place was like that, but she couldn't go there. She's not allowed to travel because of her parents' crimes. _Putting their nose where they shouldn't have wasn't really clever of them, was it?_

The teenager pushes few buttons, making them beep, and goes to the printing station. She types quickly on the tactile screen _"For a delicious heated meal, take off this tag and put your Blimk Bag into your microwave for 04 minutes and 04 seconds. Then, stick your favorite BLIND straw directly into the bag, and it's ready to consume!_

Coming home at 5 PM, she follows those instructions, with a blueberry-flavored bag. She thinks about those crazy stories about how if you leave the tag on, it sets the microwave on fire. She checks on her cupboard, counting her stock of Blimk bags. She should have enough to get through the week, but then she will have to steal some again. She feels guilty about it sometimes, mostly because she doesn't want to get Adren in trouble. But she doesn't really have a choice, her contacts are expensive, and she has to pay rent, and she also has to pay the Terrorist tax to refund what her parents allegedly destroyed.

She drinks her Blimk bag in one sip and burps, looking at the landfill through her window. Cindy puts on a more comfortable outfit: a distressed black pants that used to be her mom's, a yellow scarf so she doesn't breathe in the smell and all the dirt, and a green shirt with an " _I heart NJ_ " logo, one of her first finds. She has no idea who NJ is, but they must be pretty great for someone to wear a shirt declaring their love for them.

Moments later, she's almost at the end of the landfill, the road separating Battery City from the Zones behind her. She's already collected a latex fly mask, in which she tucked an old poster picturing an android girl sitting on a cow, holding two bags of Blimk. A bold inscription says " _Why have MILK when you can have BLIMK? Less expensive, more nourishing, Blimk comes in 48 fun flavors! Order now!"_

Suddenly, she hears a vehicle stopping in the main alley. She quickly hides behind the closest mountain of trash, clutching the fly mask against her chest. Her heart stops as two draculoids get out of their car before throwing a box near her.

\- I'm just saying, it would be easier to also throw the bodies in the-

One of them stops mid-sentence looking right in her direction. _Did he see her?_ She doesn't wait for confirmation and runs without looking back, various things falling on her as she bumps in them. She's good at running, because her parents trained her to, saying that running fast was a surviving skill. 

_"I will never make it"_ she thinks, wondering if it's a great day to join her parents in death. But she then remembers a spilled oil splatter she saw earlier, goes in its direction, jumps above it and keeps running as she hears the draculoids slipping and swearing.

She finally gets home. Cindy locks her door behind her, breath short and heart pounding in her chest. Maybe wearing green was a bad choice, she thinks, one ear against the door, attentive to any noise. But everything is calm. She's safe.

-Alright, she says to herself, starting to strip off her clothes. That's enough emotions for today.

The curfew song rings loud and clear, making her jump out of her skin as she unties her hair.

 _"Dear perfect citizen of Battery City_ , chants Emily, _it is now time to go home and get ready for another peaceful night in the comfort of your Better Living Industries housing facility"_

Cindy looks around her. The only, tiny window of her kitchen. Her bed right next to the shower. Her closet, the only thing separating the toilets from the rest of her tiny " _housing facility_ ". Tonight, it feels like a cell.

Once showered and in bed, she tells herself her favorite story, the one in which her parents escaped from where they got detained, and made it to the zones where they still live happily ever after. Another fantasy to help her cope. They don't have to be dead in her imagination. She doesn't have to be alone all the time either. She starts drifting away when a loud thump makes her ceiling vibrate. She furrows her brow and sits in her bed, waiting.

Steps. Chatters. Someone is unfolding a plastic sheet. It's weird, no one lives upstairs.

 _« That's none of your business_ , a voice in her head tells her. _You know what happens to curious cats, right? »_

It's something her dad used to say when she was asking too many questions about where he and her mom were going, and what they were doing.

Something is being plugged, and an aggressive song starts playing, only to be cut a few seconds later. _"Party, you're going to get us caught"_ she hears.

 _This is it_ , Cindy decides. She gets up, puts back on her scavenger hunt outfit and gets on the lobby's emergency exit stairs, and then climbs till she can peek through the upstairs flat's window. Three men are building something. One has bright red hair and a blue jacket, the exact same shades as her record's cover art. Another one has a scar across his cheek; making him look a bit scary. The third man is wearing a red jacket and sunglasses even though they're inside, he watches the other two working, sometimes pointing at something and mumbling.

Judging by their outfits, there's no doubt: They are killjoys, she thinks, a spark of excitement lighting up in her belly. They don't look like the murderous, blood-driven monsters described on TV, though. _They just look different_ , she thinks. Imperfect, just like her. A fourth guy enters the room, he's tall with broad shoulders and long, fluffy hair. He wears an eyepatch, which doesn't prevent him from looking straight up at her.

-Shit, she swears before almost jumping down the stairs back to her apartment.

He saw her spying on them. _Will curiosity kill the cat, this time?_

As she closes her window, she spots a Blind car parked in the street.

 _Fuck_ , she thinks. Maybe they saw her getting home earlier? Or maybe the draculoids came for _them_. It reminds her of when they came to tell her her parents were dead and she now had to pay their debt to society. She's tired of it, tired of this city, of pretending, of trying to blend in while she never will. Cindy shoves in a backpack the yellow scarf, the fly mask, a few clothes, her Cindy Lauper record and the picture of her parents. She puts the bag on the emergency exit staircase, praying for them to understand, and then puts a portion of Blimk with its tag on in the microwave, hoping the legend to be true.

Someone knocks on the door, and she's not surprised when she sees a tall, bald man with a mean face and two draculoids.

-Hi, she says.

-ID, he asks harshly.

Cindy offers her wrist to him, and he scans her chip with a red box. He then reads her info and raises an eyebrow.

-Seen or heard anything?

-No, why would I have?

\- There's been some ruckus at the landfill, and some killjoys have been seen around here.

-Why would killjoys be interested in the poorest neighborhood of Battery City? she asks. In the corner of her eye, the microwave starts smoking.

It's a matter of seconds now.

-Well, your parents were, right? the bald man spits. I'm going to...

But whatever threat he was going to puts on her gets cut by the fire alarm.

 _« Dear workers, a fire has been detected in sector 11-3119; please exit the lobby in calm. If you can't escape the fire, Better Living Industries will later collect your body »_ repeats Emily again and again.

-WHAT DID YOU DO? The man screams, grabbing her by the throat, as the smoke gets darker, invading the little apartment.

-Come on, Korse, we can come back for him later, we have to go!, urges one of his sidekick.

So he lets her go,and she gets out of the lobby, feeling like she's breathing air for the firsttime. Korse and his men are talking to the firemen androids, and she spots thekilljoys in their colorful outfits behind the crowd of people too busy to keepup with instructions to look around them. The one with the red hair raises hisarm, showing her backpack in his hand. She smiles, unable to contain her joy.She's done surviving in the consequences of her parents' death: a new life awaitsin the desert.


End file.
